To make O Canada, Wieland, wearing bright red lipstick, sang the national anthem while pressing her lips to a lithographic stone with each syllable. Her act of patriotic allegiance has been deliberately gendered: these are female lips, and possibly sexy lips. The art historian John O’Brian remarks that “the print ironically conflates male patriotic love with female erotics, while refusing to collapse the tension between the two.”
Joyce Wieland: Crafting a New Political Art
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Joyce Wieland, O Canada, 1970
Lithograph in red on wove paper, 57.4 x 76.4 cm, National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa